I'm about to create quite simple website which will contain several static pages (they will never change) and one dynamic change (let's call it news). I'was wondering whether it's possible to use MVC here without having to create controllers and views for these "static" pages. Isn't that just too much overhead?
Is there a way to make MVC simply route incoming requests to valid documents without actually having to create controller?
Just put your static content in a separate directory and link to it there. ASP.NET will simply serve up the static content as normal when the path is to a actual file. I created a static folder in my Content folder, but you could put it anywhere. The files could even live in the root of the site.
+-Content
+-images
+-static
+-about.html
+-info.html
+-styles
+-site.css
+-themes
...
For "static" aspx files, you would need to wire up a route (or use the default catch all) to something like:
public SomeAction ActionResult(string pageName)
{
return View(pageName);
}
And that should let someone make views in the appropriate folder and then have them be added and or executed on the fly.
Related
Is it possible in ASP.NET MVC 5 to dynamically create a partial view (cshtml) in the /Views/Shared directory? I have a situation where people are going to upload a bunch of HTML as strings and was thinking it would be better for performance to store them on the file system.
Is it as simple as creating a new file, steaming a string and saving?
Yes it is possible
Simply make a view like DynamicView.cshtml
#model DynamicView
#Html.Raw(Model.HTMLString)
Now the method you will use to store both the HTML and the pointer to it is a different story. You can either store the sanitized HTML in a data-base and retrieve it with a call to the Controller like
public ActionResult DynamicView(ind id)
{
DynamicView model = new DynamicView();
DynamicView.HTMLString = dbContext.HTMLViews.Where(v => v.id == id);
return View(model);
}
If you wish to write the submitted HTML to files instead, you can instead do
public ActionResult DynamicView(string filePath)
{
DynamicView model = new DynamicView();
DynamicView.HTMLString = ...code that reads file
return View(model);
}
See this related post Writing/outputting HTML strings unescaped
Quick Answer: No (you cannot/should not modify Views Folder at RunTime.)
ASP.NET MVC Views and Shared Views are meant to be compiled and run. Modifying them or Adding new ones as the Application is running is not at all advisable or practical.
What would make more sense is for you to store the uploaded html blobs in a database, file system, storage blob (cloud). Then code your Shared View or Specific Views to retrieve specific html blobs from the stored location depending upon which user is logged in.
There are a whole lot of Extension Functions in MVC that Enable you to insert partial html in views. take a look at PartialExtensions as an starting point.
I had a requirement to create top menu which will generate from DB. I tried a lot to create it using partial view. But i found most of the cases partial view is use for static content. at last i fond some helpful tutorial please find the following i hope it will help you too.
click here to see how to create Dynamic Partial view
I have an MVC project that requires there to be 2 different View folders. One is at ~/Views/ and one at ~/Framework/Views/. This is done by creating a custom view engine based on the razor view engine like this:
public class MyViewEngine : RazorViewEngine
{
private static string[] AdditionalViewLocations = new[]{
"~/Framework/Views/{1}/{0}.cshtml",
"~/Framework/Views/{1}/{0}.vbhtml",
"~/Framework/Views/Shared/{0}.cshtml",
"~/Framework/Views/Shared/{0}.vbhtml"
};
public MyViewEngine()
{
base.PartialViewLocationFormats = base.PartialViewLocationFormats.Union(AdditionalViewLocations).ToArray();
base.ViewLocationFormats = base.ViewLocationFormats.Union(AdditionalViewLocations).ToArray();
base.MasterLocationFormats = base.MasterLocationFormats.Union(AdditionalViewLocations).ToArray();
}
}
The problem is that I want to use a different _ViewStart.cshtml file in each of the 2 Views folder (i.e. ~/Views/_ViewStart.cshtml for views found in the ~/Views/ folder and ~/Framework/Views/_ViewStart.cshtml for views found in the ~/Framework/Views/ Folder), however the View Engine just uses the first one it finds which is the original one in ~/Views/.
Is this possible to do?
Thank you
This is definitely possible, I think you just missed something.
I have tested this myself using the view engine you supplied (copied and pasted verbatim). I am not seeing the same behavior as you. I have two _ViewStart.cshtml files, one at ~/Framework/Views/_ViewStart.cshtml, and one at ~/Views/_ViewStart.cshtml.
When I run a view within ~/Framework/Views/, it uses the _ViewStart.cshtml in the Framework folder. When I run a view within ~/Views/, it uses the _ViewStart.cshtml in the Views folder.
Double checking the code in RazorViewEngine using DotPeek also confirms that this is exactly how it should behave. The view engine starts checking in for a file named _ViewStart.cshtml within the same folder as the view being rendered, and then walks up the directory tree until it gets to the root of the application.
The selection of _ViewStart is hierarchical, but you've added ~/Framework/Views parallel to ~/Views. I don't think Razor is set up to actually do what you want (i.e. two completely parallel view locations). If you were to put Framework into the main Views folder, your _ViewStarts would load properly, though.
I am building an application using Play for Model and Controller, but using backbone.js, and client side templating. Now, I want the html templates to be served by Play without any backing controller. I know I could put my templates in the public directory, but I would like to use Play's templating engine for putting in the strings in my template from the message file. I do not need any other data, and hence dont want the pain of creating a dummy controller for each template. Can I do this with Play?
You could create a single controller and pass in the template name as a parameter, but I am not sure if it is a good idea.
public static void controller(String templateName) {
// add whatever logic is needed here
renderTemplate("Controller/"+templateName+".html");
}
Then point all your routes to that controller method. Forget about reverse routing, though.
I think I would still rather have a separate controller method for each template. Remember that you can use the #Before annotation (see Play Framework documentation) to have the message string handling in exactly one place, that is executed before each controller method. By using the #With annotation you can even have this logic in a separate class.
You can use template engine from any place in your code:
String result = TemplateLoader.load("Folder/template.html").render(data);
I've been working with ASP.Net MVC (3) for some time now and i like it a lot. But one thing i find a bit annoying is having to browse between the controllers / views / model / script directory all the time. So i'm wondering if there's a way to tell MVC to look for the files in a different location?
Maybe someone can tell me how to simply group the files together by controller like:
Directory: /Membership
MembershipController
LogOnView
LogOnModel
RegisterView
RegisterModel
Kind regards
Olav
I know exactly what you're talking about. Here are the conditions where I find the default MVC folder structure to be onerous:
I'm using a model-per-view approach
My controller basically only works with that one particular view
I have some javascript that only pertains to that view
Why do I want to put each of these pieces in a different folder?
I create a folder for the view in the Views folder, so you have a folder ~/Views/MyEntityList (just like the traditional MVC approach), but I put everything that pertains to that component there:
~/Views/MyEntityList/
MyEntityListController.cs
MyEntityListModel.cs
MyEntityList.js
MyEntityList.aspx
I find this structure leads all the developers to keep views decoupled from one another. No special MVC configuration is required, except for allowing browsers to access the .js resources directly.
There are some architectural patterns where this might not be a good way to go. For a model-per-view approach (see Los Techies for more description) I really like this structure.
I think you need to get the Solution Navigator extensions via Power Tools update for VS 2010.
That way, you can display in the Solution Navigator, as opposed to the solution explorer, only the open files, for example. Makes it easier.
By the way, delete all the model folders and create a separate model project, eg:
MyApp.Domain
Any solution that is beyond basic will benefit from this.
As stated in the comments to your question, Areas will also reduce your navigation requirements.
The only "looking of files" going on is with views, everything else is just a convention, so if you want you could have:
Directory: /Membership
MembershipController
LogOnView
LogOnModel
RegisterView
RegisterModel
... but the views must be in ~/Views/Membership
It looks like you have to override some behavior in the view engine. You can See this question to get a better idea.
One way I can think of to achieve this is by writing your custom view engine. You can place all these below files in Controllers/Membership
MembershipController
LogOnView
LogOnModel
RegisterView
RegisterModel
Models will not be a problem you can simply change the namespace for the models, the only problem is with the views. For this write your custom view engine so that your mvc application knows the physical location of the view files as follows.
public class CustomViewEngine : RazorViewEngine
{
public CustomViewEngine()
{
ViewLocationFormats = new[]
{
"~/Controllers/{1}/{0}.cshtml",
};
}
}
In global.asax.cs add the ViewEngine in Application_Start() by including the following code
ViewEngines.Engines.Clear();
ViewEngines.Engines.Add(new CustomViewEngine());
You may also have to take care of various other factors like updating the Layout attribute depending on where you place the _Layout.cshtml.
In case you are using areas, add the AreaViewLocationFormats string array as well.
You can do further customization by overriding some of the methods like FileExists, CreateView, CreatePartialView.
Note: Do not forget to copy web.config in the views folder to the Membership controller. Otherwise application does not find the required mvc namespaces and it does not find the symbols like viewbag, model etc.
Is there a recommended approach for creating Google Sitemaps using ASP.NET MVC?
I'm new to MVC and this is the first time I've needed to create one and wondered how best to go about it.
I have a number of static links (About Us, FAQ's etc.) that I would like included within the sitemap, but then need the rest of it to be dynamically generated from articles that have been posted on the site.
Any advice/direction on how to create this would be much appreciated.
1 - The first thing you'll need is to create a representation of your entire website a list of nodes which have children, parents and so forth. The easiest way to do this without rolling your own solution is to use the MVCSiteMapProject. It allows you so use MVCish terms like your action and controller names to define nodes which will automatically have the correct urls using your routing definitions.
2 - Now because the MVCSiteMap inherits from the default XmlSiteMap (may not have the exact name right ) you can use another add in to generate a google sitemap from the nodes you've defined in the MVCSiteMapProject.
There a bunch of ways to do #2 so its up to you to decide the technique.
You could create a generic handler the same as web forms, but I'd be inclined to use a controller action and a custom route.
Some simple steps to follow might be:
Create an action in your Home Controller (or create a new one), call it SiteMap.
Have the action return a View with your page data as the model.
Create a View called SiteMap that contains the Google XML, then iterate through your page data to generate the dynamic content.
Add a custom route to your Global.asax file that points to "/sitemap.xml" or whatever and pre-populate your the controller and action parameters with that of your new action.
If you're unsure of custom routes, just copy the default one and paste it above. The routes are handled first come first serve. Make sure you give it a new name.
Rich
for dynamic sitemap, i found this is the best solution : http://ben.onfabrik.com/posts/generating-dynamic-xml-sitemaps-in-aspnet-mvc
it use a controller to generate the xml file.